Batman Earth-53
by Max the Great and Terrible
Summary: What is Batman if not a spoiled socialite beating up the less fortunate? Let's find out. A different world governed by different rules. One where Bruce Wayne is just some poor kid who's parents were gunned down in a random mugging. Can you be Batman without the money and gadgets? With nothing but a shitty apartment and mild criminal record? ... Maybe
1. Prolog

A young Bruce, age seven, made his way out of the theater sideways, almost a crab walk in an attempt to mimic the fencing stances from the film he'd just seen. Thomas exited after his son, supporting Martha. She was a bit tipsy from the party they were leaving. She's only had a few drinks, and Thomas her husband was stone cold sober, so it wasn't a problematic state of affairs. At least, that's what she told herself as she played with the mardi-gras beads she had hung around her neck.

She lovingly watched little Bruce who, having gotten a little way ahead of them, was moving forward in his best approximation of a fencing stance. He was wearing a black mardi-gras mask that was too big for his head so it poked out at the sides where she could see from behind, wielding a pipe cleaner in such a way that it looked like a wand, but she knew in his mind it was a sword. He was muttering quietly to himself, trying to recreate half remembered lines from the movie that had been put on for the kids. Some release from the previous year. The Mask of something or other.

She smiled warmly, her eyes briefly closing in a combination of drowsiness and a slightly fuzzy mind from the drinks, but was quickly snapped awake by the light patter of cool raindrops landing on her face as it began to drizzle. It wasn't unpleasant, walking along in the beginnings of the rain. There was a certain serenity to it. In that moment there were no concerns about rent or debt, no talk from Thomas about how they'd be set if only his grandfather hadn't sold off his little company, getting the idea in his head that because the company that bought them out was successful, they would have been so on their own. There was just quiet, with the feel of the man she loved giving her support, and a clear view of the little miracle they'd made together, better than any prospects they may or may not have had long before either of them were born.

She was pondering this, moving forward mostly on autopilot, when Thomas gently stopped her momentum. He gestured down an alley to their left and whispered "The bus stop is this way," not wanting to fully wake her from her stupor. She dutifully turned as he did, still messing with the silly plastic necklace around her neck as the rain picked up.

Bruce kept on ahead, caught up in his own fantasy world of arch-villains and masked heroes, not particularly paying attention to where he was going. Before he realized that there was someone else in the alley, he bumped straight into him. He looked up at the man, having to push up his cheap mask so that it wouldn't block his vision. The man was thin and shaking. Whether from the cold of the night air and the growing rainstorm or something more chronic, no one could tell. Bruce looked back to his parents, who had frozen in their tracks, turning back to the stranger and poking him in the leg with his pipe cleaner sword.

The man shoved, Bruce aside with one hand as he used the other to draw a gun on the adults of the group, "Give m-me your wallets. I don't w-want an-any funny business."

Thomas slowly rose his hands in a placating gesture as Martha's hand tightened around her beads. "Alright son. Stay calm, we're going to do what you want. Let's take it slowly. Nobody wants to lose their lives or go to prison over twelve bucks and a metrocard." He began to lower one hand, reaching in his back pocket to pull out his wallet and hold it out toward the man with the gun. Without that card he wasn't sure how they were going to get back to their apartment this late at night, but right now he was more worried about keeping his wife and child safe.

The man reached out and grabbed the wallet, struggling a minute to get it open with one hand, but eventually succeeding with the sound of tearing velcro. He looked into the contents, seeing exactly what was described to him before, and began to seem panicked, "Th-there's got to be more." He turned quickly to point the gun at Martha, "What about you?!" He stuffed the velcro wallet into his own pocket.

With the cocktail of spirits and fear, Martha didn't feel capable of properly articulating a response. Luckily, when she didn't reply, Thomas seemed to take the hint and picked up the question, "Calm down, what's your name son?"

He got a quizzical look in reply, "J-joe, what's it to ya? I asked a question!"

"It matters to me, okay Joe? Now listen. My wife is wearing a dress, she doesn't have a purse on her, there's no place she could be storing anything you might want."

"You're- you're lying! There's no way this is all you've got!"

"We all have bills to pay. I'm sure you can sympathize with that. You're clearly in some desperate need for cash at the moment. I'm just sorry I can't do more to help."

Joe seemed to consider this for a moment, before shaking himself out of it, "No. No, she's stuffed it down her bra!"

The next few moments passed in the blink of an eye, but seemed to move in slow motion for everyone present. The mugger had lunged forward, shoving his free hand down the front of Martha's dress. Martha reacted, screaming out and trying to pull away, accidentally jerking the hand that had been holding her necklace, causing the beads to spill everywhere.

Thomas moved forward at almost the same moment as Joe, attempting to grab the arm of the hand that was violating his wife to hold it back, causing Joe to have a reaction of his own. Reflexively pulling the trigger in his gun hand, causing a shot to go off and bury itself in Martha's stomach.

Both men froze momentarily in the horror of the scene, then Thomas leaped at the attacker, attempting to tackle him to the ground. Frightened, Joe turned the gun on Thomas, pulling the trigger again. He backed up as Thomas fell to the ground next to his wife, blood pooling out from both of them to mix with the forming puddles. He looked down at the gun in his hand.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" He dropped the gun and made a mad dash down the alleyway in the opposite direction from where the Waynes had been coming from, hoping to get as far away as he could from his crime. Leaving one, seven year old boy, alone in the alley.

Bruce averted his eyes from where his parents' bodies lay on the ground. He had been unable to avert them from the atrocity as it was happening, but now found himself keeping his eyes on anything except for them. Eventually, his eyes landed on the gun used that had taken their lives. It lay in a pothole, partly filled with water and blood, several stray purple beads floating around it. It was like a painting, frozen there, all the implications of what lay just outside Bruce's field of vision, without forcing him to directly confront it.

He stayed like that, head buried between his knees, sobs and tears becoming indistinguishable from thunder and rain in the unrelenting downpour. His eyes never once shifted from their position, held on the gun of the man named Joe. He stayed that way for hours, dawn encroaching on the scene before a police officer even arrived on the site.

He was taken into an ambulance to be checked over as his parents were zipped up into black plastic bags. There had been a dismal response time, and a similar effort put into the collecting of evidence at the scene. Everything sealed up would be put in a cardboard box to be left on a shelf for the rest of eternity, not worth the resources or effort to be given anything more than what was necessary to keep up appearances. There was no way that it was going to get proper attention, not something like this. This was Gotham.


	2. Chapter 1

Bruce pressed himself farther into the corner of the GCPD holding cell, extending the distance between himself and the guy sitting across from him on the bench. Far beyond the fact that the man smelled simply awful, having been brought in for a drunken disorderly and not helped to clean the vomit off of himself, he was not a man that Bruce wanted to be sitting next to. The tattoo on his shoulder of five spades, the kind you would see on a playing card, marked him as a fairly low ranking member of the Royal Flush Gang, one of Gotham's local groups of 'talent', if you could stretch your definition of the word that far.

The Flushes weren't exactly organized crime, being better known for petty theft and intimidation tactics. That, and Bruce just couldn't get over their fucking name. He could see how Royal Flush was almost clever, what with the built in symbology that a card motif gave you, and how it let their leaders call themselves things like King without sounding entirely megalomaniacal, but did they really have to shorten it to Flushes? He couldn't count the number of times he'd seen a fight break out because a member of some rival gang had said the word in the wrong tone of voice. Hell, some of those times it'd actually been unintentional. At any rate, it was hard for Bruce to really respect the group, and disrespect tended to result in broken jaws in Gotham.

It was of great relief to him when the door to the cell finally swung open and one of the boys in blue told him he was being let out. He tried to straighten his jeans, shirt, and hair before stepping into the precinct's lobby and saw exactly what he'd been expecting. Namely, a very irritated looking young lawyer. He put on his best 'charming goofball' smile as he pulled his friend into an embrace, "Harvey! Knew you'd come through."

Harvey Dent paused before returning the hug, "You're paying me back for this Bruce. It's bad enough just knowing that you'd convince me to get you off on self defense again pro-bono if you had been actually charged for assault."

"It was self defense, and you're a public defender Harvey, you're not exactly making bank on paid cases."

"Ignoring that last part," Harvey said with a warning tone, "And you broke the guy's wrist."

"I broke that _dangerous hooligan_'s wrist," Bruce corrected, "as precaution to keep him from punching me in the face. Again."

"You provoked him."

"He was a gangbanger."

"Was he committing any crimes at the time? Did you document them? Did you attempt to contact the authorities to deal with the situation? Did you do any of the numerous things that any sane human being would have been before, according to the report that _you_ filed with the police, calling him an inbred asshole?"

"Who's lawyer are you?"

"You don't pay me! And you were hardly helping your case by giving them that level of detail."

"That's what happened!"

"That's not the point Bruce!" Harvey yelled suddenly. He took a moment to calm himself down, "You can't keep going around acting like there aren't consequences for this kind of behavior. Sooner or later you're going to get yourself stabbed, or put in prison and then stabbed. Either way, you're going to get into trouble I can't talk you out of. So the least you could do is use your right to remain silent until I get there."

Bruce opened his mouth to respond, but didn't find any words coming forth. Harvey was right, of course, and he knew that. It didn't change that he _felt_ right. He couldn't just let a guy pass by when he knew that he had done so much evil. Proof or no, he knew that guy had been responsible for a break in down the road from Bruce's favorite bar a few nights previous. He'd practically been bragging about it. Guy like that would have had a rap sheet too: the same list of assault charges as Bruce had, but likely armed robbery and gang offenses as well, maybe even rape. Maybe muggings. He shook himself from that line of thought, "Sorry Harv."

"I'm just glad they kept you in a different cell from the guy you were fighting this time."

"Yeah… those cops really didn't like me last time. Probably shouldn't-"

"Don't. Don't even finish whatever boneheaded thing you were about to say just then Bruce. Let's just get out of here. I'll give you a ride back to your apartment."

The trip from the precinct to Bruce's building was tense. He was lucky to have Harvey, even when their personalities started to clash. They'd grown up together after Bruce's parents had died, a few doors down from each other in the same apartment building. As time had gone on, Harvey had managed to put himself through law school and accrue a mountain of student debt while Bruce never managed to hold on to any job for very long at all. For a while he'd thought he was meant to become a police officer, but that dream was qualshed when he failed the psych portion of the academy's entrance exam. Even that sad attempt was enough to get him a bit of a reputation with a lot of the people he knew as someone who might squeal to the police, a reputation he worked hard to get rid of. It was hard to get close to people when they didn't think they could trust you, whether your heart was in the right place or no.

As a result, Bruce's circle of friends was a rather small one, and he wasn't particularly close to all the people that he did count as a part of it. So it was a small miracle that he not only knew a lawyer, but knew one that would put up with his shit and actually help him out when he was in a bind, which was more often than he'd like to admit. It had taken him some time to realize that, even though he thought he was in the right in most cases, it was still almost always a good idea to just not get arrested in the first place. It had taken him a while after that to get good enough to actually escape arrest, not just resist it. Still, he would now and again wind up in this exact situation, and it was at these times that knowing Harvey was a real blessing. Which would all be well and good if he could articulate it in a way that didn't make him sound like a bit of a wimp.

Instead he just thanked Harvey for the ride, making a quick quip about the way he was dressed that he couldn't even remember a few moments later, and began to bog his way up the stairs of his apartment complex. It was fast approaching one in the morning and he had had a trying day to say the least. He wanted nothing more than to tear off his clothes in a blind stupor and fall asleep before he had even hit the surface of his bed, but it would seem that the universe had something else in store for him, since he had barely passed the door of one of his neighbors from down the hall when the shouting that he'd gotten used to ignoring from that particular apartment gave way to a loud crash.

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and turned around and made his way back to the door in question. He paused, willing himself to just ignore all this and go to bed, before finally giving into his instincts and rapping on the door. The noise from inside the apartment went quiet for a minute, and nobody came to the door. When he was sure that they were trying to ignore him, he knocked again, harder. After a few more seconds, the door swung open and a girl yelled out, "What the hell do you- oh, hey Bruce."

Selina Kyle leaned against the door frame. She was dressed in torn jeans and a white tank-top, her black bra clearly visible underneath. Bruce was fairly confident that Selina made a conscious effort to dress that way, as if to make a statement. The jeans weren't pre-torn, but those weren't regular wear and tear either. If he had to bet, Bruce would say that she'd took a pair of scissors or something to them herself. Her black hair was cropped short, a messy style likely done with the same pair of scissors as she was using on the jeans. What really stood out in her appearance, however, was a fresh looking bruise on her clavicle.

"Hey, pervert," Selina snapped her fingers in front of Bruce's eyes, "My eyes are up here. What the hell do you want, banging on our door, do you know what time it is?"

"I do, which is why I was surprised to hear so much shouting. Is Thomas in?"

Selina unconsciously reached up for her shoulder, brushing against the bruise, "Huh? Oh, yeah. We were just… talking."

"Sounded pretty loud for talking."

"Yeah? Well why don't you mind your own fucking beeswax?"

"Listen, Selina, if you need help, you can tell me. Or just blink twice, if it's that sort of situation."

Selina stared at him for a second, "What the shit are you talking about Bruce? Get the fuck out of here. Nobody asked you to butt into other people's business okay?"

"I just want to make sure that you're alright."

"Hey!" A voice came from deeper in the apartment as a tall, broad shouldered man stepped into the doorway behind Selina, "The lady said to fuck off." Thomas Blake, Selina's boyfriend, was dressed almost identically to his girlfriend. He had a tight white t-shirt, that a less in shape man would never dare to put on, and a pair of jeans. Aside from the obvious lack of bra and the relative intactness of his pants, they couldn't have synchronized their outfits better if they had tried. Hell, maybe they did, but they didn't really strike Bruce as that kind of couple.

"Technically, the lady asked me to get the fuck out of here, but point made," Bruce acquiesced, putting his hands up in defeat, "I heard a crash, and I wanted to make sure everything was alright. If I'm not needed, then I'm not needed. God knows I don't need another excuse to go and get some sleep."

Before they could retort in any way, Bruce turned and made his way back down the hall to his own apartment. He heard the door shut at about the time that he started to dig around for his keys. He found them pretty quickly, one of the benefits of having had your belongings returned to you less than an hour ago, and stumbled into his apartment. He had his shirt off before he had even gotten to the bedroom, and caught a whiff of himself. Maybe he should take a shower before going to bed. One, or one plus however long that exchange had taken, wasn't really that late anyway. Then again, it had been an irritating day and he just wanted it done with. He raised the shirt to his nose and sniffed. Okay then, definitely going to want to take a shower.

He headed into the bathroom and began to run water through the showerhead. The heating in the building was shit and it'd take a minute for it to reach a temperature he was comfortable stepping into, so he began running water in the sink as well and splashed some on his face. He had one shoe off and the other in hand when he heard a second, larger crash come from the hallway. He didn't even stop to turn off the running water before running into the hallway.

He made his way down the hall and began to bang on the door to Selina and Thomas' apartment again, to no avail. He slammed his fist against the door even harder as the shouting continued. When he heard the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor, that was the last straw. He began to throw himself against the door with all of his weight until the wood around the lock finally splintered and he half ran, half fell into the apartment.

The scene that lay out before him was not exactly what he had been expecting. Well, it was almost what he's been expecting, but there was one major difference. He burst into his neighbor's apartment, shirtless, shoe in hand, being wielded like it was some sort of weapon, to see Selina holding a broken lamp and standing over the prone form of Thomas Blake, who was holding his hand over his eye.

The room was quiet for a second as both the apartment residents and Bruce took in the unexpected sights before them. The brief pause seemed to stretch on into infinity before being broken by Selina's cry of "What the holy fucking shit Bruce?! Did you just break down our door?"

Bruce didn't know how to respond, eventually going with, "I… I thought that you were…"

"You thought what Bruce? We told you to screw off!"

Thomas, by this point, had partially recovered and was pulling himself into a sitting position, "You're going to have to pay for the door man."

"She was just! And I thought!"

"I can take care of myself Bruce!" Selina shot back at his half formed protests.

"Can he?"

"Why don't you butt out Wayne," Thomas said from his spot on the ground, "Stop trying to play the hero and mind your own goddamn business." He began to pull himself to his feet and walk to the kitchen, or rather kitchen area.

"Seriously Bruce," Selina picked up the lecture where her boyfriend had left off, "When people tell you to let them alone, actually fucking do it for more than, what's it been, like ten minutes?"

Thomas returned from the kitchen with a sizable slab of steak being held up to the eye he'd previously been cupping on the floor, "Is he still here? Go home Wayne." Bruce nodded slowly, then began to head out the door, pulling it as shut as it would stay with the broken lock, "And I'm sending you the fucking bill for the fucking door!"

Bruce got back to his apartment, realizing with a start that he'd left both the shower and the faucet running while he'd been gone and quickly shut them off. With the cost of the broken door, he could hardly afford a huge water bill that month, or the next few. He almost wanted to not pay for the repairs, so Thomas would call the cops and he and Selina would have to explain the situation, but that wasn't really how things worked in Gotham. No, if he didn't pay Thomas back, Thomas would get some of his buddies and come to beat Bruce up.

He was tempted to call the police himself to report the pair for domestic violence, but he'd been shaking that impression for years now. Besides, he wasn't even sure how they'd handle this sort of case. Didn't make a lot of sense to put both of them in prison, and if neither of them agreed to press charges there was no way there'd be a restraining order involved, for either party. Really, this was honestly and truly fucked. Yes, seriously fucked enough to justify three different synonyms for truth. Plus those two just then.

A shower was no longer a reasonable goal. He was going to pass out and wait for tomorrow to decide what to do. Or rather, wait to decide whether he was going to do anything. They had, after all, asked him numerous times and in numerous ways not to involve himself. If he did decide to ignore their wishes, which he probably would, then it would be time to figure out what exactly he could actually do about it, which then might prove to be nothing.

That was an awful lot of thinking to look forward to, and thinking about all that thinking was enough to keep his mind busy as he drifted off to sleep. With any luck, that would be enough things to think about to distract him all day tomorrow so he wouldn't have to worry about looking for a new job. Turns out that when you punch a customer, you get fired, even from your favorite bar. So today had been a learning experience, and with any luck the lesson would actually stick the forth or fifth time that he was taught it, cause it sure as hell wasn't going to stick this time. Maybe it was less a matter of punching customers at work, and more a matter of having the wrong job in which to be punching customers at work. That sort of behavior may have lost him his job as a bar back, but if he had time tomorrow after all that thinking he had to do, maybe he'd head back to the bar and apply as a bouncer.


End file.
